When Desire Wakes the Old Wound

a reframe I RELY on

I fall into this moment all the time, especially around money. I’ll find something I want - like food delivery on a hard day, or a course about something I’m obsessed with, and when I remember I can’t afford it, I get hot. It feels like I’ve been caught wanting, like wanting proves I don’t belong in the version of life everyone else seems to be living. It isn’t really about the thing. It’s about what my body learned a long time ago: wanting is dangerous, wanting leads to pain, wanting means you’re about to be shut out. So the second desire shows up, my system collapses. It’s trying to protect me.

Lately I’ve been practicing a different response. When the drop comes, I pause and read this to myself:

Something in me wants more. That doesn’t make me needy, greedy or flawed. It means I’m alive. I’m allowed to want what I can’t have. I don’t have to punish myself for it. I don’t have to disappear. This moment is uncomfortable, and it isn’t dangerous. I can be here. I can keep myself company. I still belong to my own life.

Then I do take some small action to show myself I’m allowed to want. A karate kick usually does the trick.

Nothing much changes at first. I still can’t buy the thing. But I know that every time I stay with myself instead of getting lost in stories about my worth, my body learns that life isn’t something I’m locked out of.

I made a tiny guide, a five-minute reset, for this exact moment, and I’m using it every day. It absolutely helps!

Love, Eden

P.S. If you want to try it out with me, you can find it here.

(it’s $3 for a 2 pg phone companion)